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Monday, April 11, 2011

Nickelodeon TMNT Fan Preview Event - Final Notes and Thoughts

To put a final period on last week's series of posts on the Nickelodeon Fan Preview Event, I thought I'd share some final pictures and notes. To say that they were generous and gracious hosts to the bunch of us would be a huge understatement. Thank you so much to everyone who made this event happen! I hope that all of you got the kind of feedback you were looking for, and that you might use some of it to make the new TMNT series even better than the small glimpses at it that we got. Thank you to all of my fellow TMNT fans in attendance, for just being awesome! It was great to see old friends (some for the first time) and meet new friends. Now here are some pictures, some of which showed up on Facebook over the last month...

After Nickelodeon had made the invite to the event official, they sent all the attendees a special pizza delivery. Yes, there was an actual pizza inside. ^_^

About a week before the trip, all of our travel info showed up in shiny bubble envelopes.

When we got to our hotel rooms, there was a package of goodies waiting. Inside included some snack food (green apple licorice, New York pizza-flavored Pirate's Booty), water, and a t-shirt. This was awesome, but it is rather large and would not fit in my simple carry-on luggage I had brought. Oh well, two carry-ons wouldn't be a problem.

At the end of the big day, they gave us a poster tube and a USB drive in a pizza slice pouch. Very awesome, but the poster tube was also too big for my little carry-on luggage. Now I was up to three pieces of carry-on. Hmmm. But it all worked out - Since my flight was just on a little plane, they have to put the carry-on luggage down below anyways. So I only had to carry the box and the poster tube into the cabin, where they both fit in the overhead without trouble. Whew!

Below is the one notecard of notes that I took throughout the day. It's not much - nothing here is really new from what I shared last week - and more than anything it just shows off my bad chicken scratch hand writing, but this is the stuff that stood out for me as being worth writing down. Remember: This is all still a Mutation in Progress and things could easily change before the final product airs in a year and a half.

Eastman Theater - This is from the pilot animatic, where the theater April is waiting for the Turtles at had a giant sign naming it the Eastman Theater. Kevin Eastman, of course, is one of the co-creators of the TMNT.

April, 16, Peer - In describing why April has been redesigned to be 16, we were told it was to make her a peer to the Turtles, as well as to give the girl audience someone to relate to.

30 min - The running time of an episode (with commercials). Kinda a no-brainer.

Comedy, Action, Mutation - What attributes we can expect from the new series.

Deeper Storytelling, Mythology - Expect the background story to be revealed slowly in parts instead of all at once and for a mythology to build throughout the series.

Kid Relatable - Expect the Turtles to act more like teenagers than they ever have before.

CG Meets Anime, Comic Book Feel - The visual style you can expect to see from the show.

Splinter, Human w/ Daughter - As mentioned last week, Splinter will start as the Human Hamato Yoshi who leaves behind a daughter (is she dead or alive? we have no idea) when he flees from Japan to New York.

AI Chip in MP3 Player - This is what we saw in the pilot animatic.

Less Than $6/Figure - Hey, looks like I remembered the $5.99 price for the action figures correctly. Hopefully Playmates can stick to this.

In general, I'm very happy with what I've seen. I was really surprised to see the series using the comic books for as much of a source as it has. Something I was not able to get across well in any of my posts is just how funny the pilot was. Not the slapstick humor a lot of you are afraid of, but just really funny banter between all of the characters. The biggest question marks will be how the final CG ends up looking and how April's character changes are integrated into the story.

Another area of concern I had, which I haven't really made mention of, was the fear that Michaelangelo would be written as the stupid little brother, instead of a regular goof. In the pilot I thought he was just perfect; I just don't want to see his character degrade into stupidity like he did in the 4Kids series. But otherwise, I think we're in for a real treat - something better than could have ever been possible had Peter Laird not sold the TMNT rights to Nickelodeon.

And finally, here's the list of attendees, some of whom have posted their own accounts of the event:

April as Donatello's love interest? Nooooooooo!!! Donnie is MINE!!! lol (Of course I was always April when I was younger and we played pretend, and these days Donatello is my most absolute fav, but- still!)